In a rare but resounding act of judicial sanity, the Supreme Court of the United States has delivered an 8-0 ruling that reins in one of the most abused weapons in the bureaucratic arsenal: environmental obstructionism. The case, Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, stemmed from a challenge to a planned railway in Utah, a project that environmentalists attempted to kneecap through endless litigation under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). In a time when green tape has been weaponized to stall or cancel everything from pipelines to housing, this decision marks a turning point—and it’s worth celebrating.
Let’s start with the heart of the ruling. Writing for the majority, Justice Brett Kavanaugh emphasized that,
“NEPA does not allow courts, ‘under the guise of judicial review’ of agency compliance with NEPA, to delay or block agency projects based on the environmental effects of other projects separate from the project at hand”.
Translation: judges can’t play fortune teller and block infrastructure because of speculative “ripple effects” on theoretical future projects. In other words, environmental lawfare just hit a serious snag.
This case was triggered by the Surface Transportation Board’s approval of an 88-mile railway to carry crude oil from Utah’s Uinta Basin to the national rail network. Eagle County, Colorado, and its usual cast of green litigators tried to stop the project, arguing that the environmental review should have considered other hypothetical projects or downstream effects that may—or may not—result from this railway’s existence.
But the Court decisively said no. Agencies aren’t expected to possess clairvoyant powers. As Kavanaugh clarified,
“The fact that the project might foreseeably lead to the construction or increased use of a separate project does not mean the agency must consider that separate project’s environmental effects”.
It’s worth pausing to appreciate the magnitude of this decision. The ruling wasn’t 5-4. It wasn’t even 6-3. It was 8-0, with Justice Neil Gorsuch recusing himself. That means even Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson—all of whom joined a concurring opinion—recognized the madness of allowing environmental review to be expanded into an all-purpose tool for litigation and delay.
Predictably, the Chicken Littles of climate alarmism are already wailing. Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) declared,
“This decision lays the groundwork for an environmental catastrophe. As the harsh impacts of the climate crisis increase the vulnerability of the Colorado River, the risk of an oil spill along this train route is unacceptable.
Increasing fracking levels and transporting them across the country would not only harm the communities through which the train travels, including those in Denver, but it would further devastate the communities surrounding the facilities where this oil would burn.”
and fretted over the hypothetical risk of oil spills along the train route. But this sort of fear-mongering is precisely what the Court’s decision seeks to restrain. If every project can be blocked based on what might happen in an alternate timeline, then no project would ever move forward.
And make no mistake: that’s the goal for many green activists. NEPA, once a procedural statute meant to inform agencies, has become a cudgel to halt development. Environmental impact statements now stretch to thousands of pages, often taking years—and millions of dollars—to complete. These reviews are less about stewardship than obstruction, used by opponents of any development as a bureaucratic chokehold.
As Justice Kavanaugh rightly stated, courts are not meant to
“micromanage those agency choices so long as they fall within a broad zone of reasonableness”.
This ruling reinforces that principle and restores a shred of common sense to environmental regulation.
This decision also arrives at a time when the American economy is gasping for infrastructure upgrades—bridges, pipelines, rail, transmission lines. All of it. Yet too often, federal judges acting as philosopher kings have halted projects based on the flimsiest environmental pretexts. In recent years, judicial overreach has been the favored tactic of climate warriors who couldn’t get their agenda passed through Congress.
With this ruling, it has taken a welcome stand against the activist judiciary and the technocratic delusion that every consequence of human progress must be mitigated in advance.
Now, let’s be clear: this isn’t about ignoring real environmental issues. But it is about proportionality, reason, and the rule of law. No society can function—much less thrive—under a regime where every project is presumed guilty until proven environmentally pure by a thousand bureaucrats. NEPA was never intended to be a veto power for anti-development zealots.
The Supreme Court’s decision in Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County represents a triumph of logic over litigious lunacy. It affirms that federal agencies—not judges and not activist groups—are responsible for environmental assessments, and that their discretion should be respected unless they act irrationally.
For too long, infrastructure has been hostage to hypotheticals, paralyzed by process. This ruling loosens those chains. And that’s a victory not just for Utah’s railway, but for every American who still believes in building things.
Here’s to the rare sound of a gavel striking in favor of progress.
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